Match-up Analysis: The True Point of Playtesting

Posted on Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Before the actual strategic content of this article, I just want to say a few words on the state of elevated discussion on this game. It’s practically non-existent. A quick comparison with Magic: The Gathering will show you what a sorry state our discussion is in. They have several sites devoted to high-level strategic content and more articles produced in a week then Yu-Gi-Oh has produced in several months. I’m not really interested in why this is, and I know there are several reasonable explanations. I just find it sad that there are so few resources in this game to help players get better (and of the few resources they do have, many simply cannot be trusted. Of the articles on this very site, most of them have either negligible actual strategic content or terrible content. Many of these articles see much praise, despite helping no-one). As such, I’ve decided to contribute what I can. I’m not the greatest player of this game, but I do bring a more scientific mind to the table then many Yu-Gi-Oh players, which should enable me to write articles that set up some form of discourse on the game. I’m not deluded here – I don’t expect anything I write to help my audience greatly; I’m not that good. I’m publishing these in a forum for a reason: I want to discuss the ideas in a rational manner, and hopefully raise the level of discourse about this game. With that being sad, the article:

Match-up Analysis: The True Point of Playtesting

Soon after a player begins playing this game competitively, the concept of playtesting is introduced to them. The idea, on its surface, is simple enough; you play games with the purpose of improving, rather than winning or simply having fun. Like many others, when I first discovered this concept, I didn’t understand it in its entirety. For several years, to me, the point of playtesting was to improve one’s deck, not one’s play skill. After all, this game is simple, and I’m good at it. I can’t get better, right? Wrong. Improving a deck is a facet of playtesting, and an important one, but not a particularly time consuming one. Decks that don’t work as intended are quickly identified when played, and can either be thrown by the wayside or tinkered with until a better form is found. This side of playtesting can be accomplished by playing against any deck, and is, I believe, where most players get stuck. Players play against whatever decks they can find to play against and keep tinkering with their deck, making small card swaps that, despite what they think, don’t actually change their deck that much. It is easy to fall into the trap of believing that only your own deck matters; after all, it is what you have the most control over.

True playtesting of a deck takes a deck that works reasonably well and plays it against specific decks, generally whatever is in the meta. Knowing your own deck is not enough, you need to know how it interacts with the decks you are likely to come across. And please, don’t think that I mean you need this information so that you can figure out how to sidedeck; I don’t mean that at all. It is true, but at an almost trivial level. Without knowing how the matchup he is playing in, how can a Lightsworn player decide if he should activate Necro Gardna on any given attack, or if he should use Honest to save his Jain? How can a Blackwing player determine whether or not he should Synchro summon Armor Master, or if the time is right to set his Torrential Tribute? These are all decisions that players do not link to match-ups enough of the time, and instead decide based on some other criteria, but are, in fact, best answered through knowledge of the match-up being played.

For example, last format, when playtesting Lightsworn vs Blackwings, I realized that Icarus Attack was a key card in that matchup. So key, in fact, that on the first turn of the game, I would prefer to play Lumina+ Aurkus rather than Lumina + Garoth. In a vacuum, Lumina + Garoth was a stronger play because of the potential to draw a card in the endphase. However, in that matchup (and, in fact, for the majority of Lightsworn’s matchups last format) Lumina + Aurkus was a field that was more conducive to victory, despite being theoretically weaker. This is the kind of knowledge that only playtesting can bring you.

Average to good players of this game play tactically – they look at their hand and field and their opponent's field / hand size and make plays based on what they feel would give them the best advantage under whatever advantage system they feel is the best (card advantage, LP advantage, hybrid, etc) at the time. Tactical playing really only requires knowledge of how your deck works and basic knowledge of what your opponents deck contains and how their cards work. This requires only minimal playtesting to understand your own deck, and is the level of play that most players are stuck on. I believe that the reason that many players think that this game takes no skill to play is because they are stuck at this level. This game's mechanics are not hard to comprehend, and understanding how cards interact and how to count is all that is required to play tactically, and it is therefore fairly simple.

Good to great players of this game play strategically – they use their knowledge of how a matchup works to influence their plays. They play to ‘critical positions’ from which they have determined, through playtesting, that they are favored. This is the true level of skill in this game. Having this kind of matchup knowledge allows them to make reads on what cards their opponent has based on the way they are playing and how their opponents deck has to play to counter theirs. Sometimes they make plays that are, to the eyes of a tactical player, suboptimal because doing so allows them to conserve resources for a push to a critical position, or to beat a critical position of their opponents. Playing strategically is difficult because the game of Yu-Gi-Oh is so dynamic: the game state changes radically all the time, and one must be able to identify and properly address all they key points of it every turn. No two games are identical, so this is not some kind of memorization of what happened in playtesting – it’s a true test of adaptive learning from playing the matchup.

Please, respond with any thoughts you have on tactical and strategic playing, and whether or not you think I’m crazy.

~Jake

[E.P.B. notes: for the record I think you're crazy]